Re: Fragrance, cleanliness and avoiding heat rash may be the reason
Posted by CAtherine Cartwright Jones on August 06, 1999 at 15:32:39:
In Reply to: Re: Fragrance, cleanliness and avoiding heat rash may be the reason posted by Brett Blatchley on August 05, 1999 at 22:03:40:
One of the first answers I ever got from a Pakistani woman to "why do
you henna for a wedding" was "So the bride's hands won't be all
sweatty when she meets her husband for the first time."
Various other bits I've read indicate that henna is a considered
to be a great comfort to skin under heat and stress...and has been
used as a deoderant, an anti-chafing skin care, skin strengthener,
anti-fungal, relief from hair removal rash and sunblock...but I can't
say how much of this is "old wive's tales" and how much really helps.
I am certain that it is an excellent sunblock. It certainly scents
the skin. I kept one foot sole hennaed this summer and one
un-hennaed, and the hennaed one had 50% fewer cracks where the
callouses thicken and crack while barefooting, and the hennaed
foot sole was more supple than the unhennaed one after a month...but
that doesn't count as a clinical trial (that's just one lady's feet).
People who have lived in India, who visit this forum, have had far
greater experience with the "skin care" aspect of henna than I, and if
you cruise the archive, you'll find what they've been kind enough to
share.
I tried to go back into my books of South Asian erotic miniature
paintings to look for hennaed areas other than hands and feet....but
found a lot of pages mysteriously vanished during the time our
children went through puberty. Oh well. I suppose that's what those
paintings were created for in the first place.